Brian Coppola :: Fine Art (On Topic)

Michael Herring "The Catch Trap" (1980)

Artist: Michael Herring (All)

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Michael Herring The Catch Trap (1980) Comic Art

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paperback cover

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Artwork Details

Title:	Michael Herring "The Catch Trap" (1980)
Artist:	Michael Herring (All)
Media Type:	Colored Pencils
Art Type:	Animation
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	2,236
Likes on CAF:	1 2
Comments:	0
Added to Site:	6/3/2016
Comic Art Archive:

Description

Michael Herring
"The Catch Trap"
Paperback Art Cover (1980)
20x30
oil on stretched canvas

From the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction - MICHAEL HERRING

(1947- ) Prolific US illustrator, now resident in Australia, active in several other genres as well as sf. Herring received his art education in London at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting (1967-69) and at the University of California, Long Beach (1969-70). For the next several years he tried to make a living as a fine artist in California. In 1975 he moved to New York City and began working as a professional illustrator. Until about 1990 he worked in oils on canvas; thereafter he switched to alkyds because of their faster drying.
His first published cover was for the 1977 Del Rey Books edition of Peter Dickinson's YA fantasy The Blue Hawk (1976). In 1979-86 he painted a series of 29 covers for the Del Rey Books reissue of L Frank Baum's Oz books and the series' continuation by Ruth Plumly Thompson. He has also had an extended association with the "James Axler" books published by Gold Eagle: for the Deathlands series he did the covers for #1 to #72 as well as for the series' prequel, Deathlands: Encounter (1999); he did all three of the covers for the Earth Blood trilogy; and he did the first 20 covers for the Outlanders series.

The book itself, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, is considered a landmark in same sex literature. Bradley considered it to be her "overtly gay novel." In 1980, is was marketed to Bradley readers as: "... a mainstream novel about three generations of an Italian,circus family, has been reissued in paperback with a new cover and a blurb) especially aimed at the "gay" market but despite the very strong "gay" emphasis, it is not a'"gay novel" per se, but a long and complex novel of many family relationships. It would be equally easy to call it a feminist novel because of the way in which it highlights the disastrous results to women of the 1940s caused by the attitudes of men in such families."

I heard from the son of the man who posed for the "Mario" character (standing on the right), which adds a bit of wonderful nice narrative texture of the piece.

"My father, �lvaro, was a 29-year old trapezist who modelled as Mario for Herring in 1979. He was already struggling pursuing his studies during that time, eventually becoming an agronomy engineer in 1981, a year before I was born. He is the man in your painting."

"The other was not a trapezist, because the artist obviously need a red-haired young man to portray Tommy and the circus my father worked in did not have one. Both my father and the other man had to pose - if memory serves me correctly - 28 times for Herring. Each of them! They were painted separately and even the hands were "joined" together through the artists' skills, because they never had to hold them while posing (there was a photo, though, but just one). Also, the costumes were not green: this was made up afterwards by Herring to perhaps enhance colours or the general tone and atmosphere."

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Joined:	March 2009
Last Login:	September 2025
Country:	UNITED STATES
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